Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility, especially with regard to the environment, has become a major facet in surviving today’s green-obsessed corporate atmosphere. With global warming and the carbon footprint on the radar of every watch group, companies are trying harder than ever to create CSR campaigns that truly benefit their communities. Sometimes the campaigns win awards and audiences, but other times, they may be more of a formality than a movement towards change.

ExxonMobil, the largest integrated oil company in the world, releases a corporate citizenship report every year to let the world know what it plans to do in the global community. One of the biggest portions of the report is the environmental performance section. This section outlines various measures taken by the company to increase its involvement in environmental preservation and improvement. The 2006 report focused on global climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, spill prevention and environmental management. Within the report, ExxonMobil promises to operate in an environmentally responsible manner in everything that they do. Sounds like the company grabbed CSR and ran in the right direction, right?

SourceWatch, a watch-dog organization dedicated to documenting propaganda activities in the PR world, has written extensively on the lies surrounding ExxonMobil’s CSR promises. Questionable increases in profits amidst soaring gas prices, the boycott against progressive radio station Air America Radio and the large sums of money going to political and lobbying campaigns top the list of allegations against ExxonMobil. Even the tiger mascot has been questioned by assorted NGO’s who claim the corporation destroys the environment as it claims to be saving endangered Bengal tigers.

The main accusation surrounding the company, however, stems from a study published by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This study offers insight into ExxonMobil’s alleged disinformation tactics, much like the ones used by the tobacco industry, in its handling of climate change. According to the report, ExxonMobil has spent nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 on organizations specializing in climate change denial, purportedly funding 29 of these organizations in 2004 alone. These organizations publicly disagree with the climate change theory, and many completely reject the idea of climate change altogether. ExxonMobil paying companies to discard climate change theories? Doesn’t sound very responsible to me.

So I guess the user-friendly website and optimistic report are a keeping-up-with-the times strategy – the company realizes that CSR is a necessary element in surviving today’s business landscape, but it has yet to instill this model into its own corporate culture. Until a company can fully embrace CSR as part of its business model, empty promises and broken pledges will set the backdrop for potential change.